


Haptic Feedback

by PinkAxolotl85



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Ableism, Accidental Self-Harm, Aphasia, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Brain Damage, Brain Surgery, Cybernetics, Digital Art, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Panic Attacks, Seizures, Stimming, Temporary Amnesia, Traumatic Brain Injury, Vomiting, autistic rhys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 22:00:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18507922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkAxolotl85/pseuds/PinkAxolotl85
Summary: The problem with brains is that they’re very finicky things and surgery on them is dangerous.Rhys read the risk reports, he knew this, yet he still signed those papers.





	Haptic Feedback

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously though, do read the tags. All of them are there for a very good reason.
> 
> This fic was beta’d by the amazing [Votives 'Vex'.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/votives/pseuds/votives)
> 
> Special thanks to [Sybaritick 'Cal',](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybaritick) [OverlyOptimistic 'Lou',](https://www.deviantart.com/overlyoptomistic123) [Sylverstia 'Ki',](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylverstia) [Argonaute ‘Ren’,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/argonaute/pseuds/argonaute) and [Sorceringing 'Omi'.](https://twitter.com/SorceringingArt)

     The problem with brains is that they’re very finicky things.

     They’re what makes you _you_ , and how each reacts to damage is different. Some people had tiny sections cut out and their memories and lives ruined thereafter, others lived with half a brain and nobody would even know.

     Brains are finicky and surgery on them is risky.

     But, of course, the port surgery, the socket implanted into the side of his head, had statistics in Rhys’ favour. And, of course, that was good enough for him.

     It had side effects, yes, temporary ones: nausea, dizziness, memory loss, emotional numbness, non-existent attention span, and abnormal sleep cycles among the few he remembered.

     Keyword: temporary.

     Those that survived the surgery would recover with no long-term adverse effects, healthy as a horse. The case fatality rates were low, and those that didn’t wake up had previous-existing conditions. They shouldn’t have signed up at all in his opinion.

     The port needed space that the brain couldn’t give. Sections needed to be removed, there was no other way about it. Those sections were parts of the frontal lobe, but that’s fine, the lobe was good at recovery and reassignment anyway, especially with certain drugs to coax its recovery.

     The problem was how close the port was to other sections of his brain; any further down or to the left and the surgeons would be removing parts that controlled his body movement, any higher up or to the right and they were heading into the speech centres.

     The port was already nicking that area, but that’s all it was supposed to be: just a catch at the very corner of this vital, irreplaceable area.

     He read the risk reports, he knew this.

     The port more important than his functioning as a human being, he knew this.

     If it had only been the port, but it wasn’t. There were complications… Many complications.

     Inviable nerves in the arm had been the start of the mess that would become of his surgeries. Inviable nerves meant the synthetic ones couldn’t match the genetic data, unable to latch a hold as their replacements.

     After Rhys’ emergency contact – Vaughn – agreed and signed more papers, microelectrode arrays were pierced into his brain. They’d pick up brain activity for the movement of the arm, replacing the need for nerves entirely. But all that really meant were more wires twisted around and through his brain.

     There weren’t any complications with the eye: the thin wires threaded through and replacing the optic nerves were part of the plan. Tied up into his occipital lobe near the back of his head. A few tiny pins and hooks to stop it being moved from position.

     All three systems were connected with further wires, so each could ‘communicate’ and store information, the port would upload new such information or software updates.

     His brain barely healed from any of this, excessive bleeding and scarring galore.

     They feared to wake him up _at all_ for a time, keeping him on heavy medications to extend his artificial coma.

     Brains are finicky, and they didn’t know if he’d still be him, they feared showing him to his friends especially. Worrying that the outcome of fucked up surgery was irreversible brain damage. Erasing _him._

     They were right on that count, by the way, the brain damage.

     But when they woke him up and asked him questions, apart from all the effects of morphine and other drugs he was on, there was nothing wrong. That’s what the report said.

     And Rhys, a man with ‘nothing wrong with his head,’ proceeded to fail every neurological test afterwards.

     As you do, of course.

     Being shown a picture of red fruit and knowing exactly what it is but being unable to name it.

     His friends being able to talk to him for the first time in seven months but as soon as they left he’d find their names whisked away from him. Morphine would soon take away the memory of them being there at all.

     As the day he was due to be discharged drew nearer they weaned him off the mushy foods and concoction of drugs he’d grown accustomed to. Memories became less fuzzy, his friends’ names returned.

     But even out of the medical bay, back into their shared apartment, the days were short in his mind, strung together with conversational words he could remember. Nouns out of reach.

_'Going sleeping’_ was his get out excuse, used when he couldn’t stomach looking at the cards in Vaughn or Yvette’s hands anymore.

     Couldn’t name that object with four wheels.

     Couldn’t name the thing he used to type on daily.

     Couldn’t name what used to be his favourite colour…

     When even that excuse wouldn’t work, and his daydreaming wouldn’t discourage them, he’d throw the cards at them, then glass cups at walls, and plates on floors.

     Each time he’d snap from blinding anger to horror at what he’d done, screaming out that he was sorry like the louder he was the more he’d mean it.

     Glass pieces would be strewn everywhere and caught in the carpet and he’d try to clean up every single one. The pain of the glass shredding his fingers never quite reaching his overclocked brain, feeling only the muted warmth of blood dripping from his hands.

     Warmth and the resurfacing sadness and anger when his cybernetic fingers wouldn’t move the way he wanted them to.

     He’d always end up crying on his side in a ball with bloody hands clutching at his hair, sobbing into his elbows.

     The final peak to another catastrophic meltdown.

     Vaughn and Yvette didn’t dare touch him, there was no real comfort they could give him. They’d tried before, _of course they had it was agonising to watch_ , but it would only spin his hazy mind into more panic.

     Always finding a way to hurt himself more or hyperventilate until he threw up.

     It was only when all his fight had gone and tears dried could his friends wordlessly pull him up and into the kitchen, long legs shaking under him the entire way.

     Lidded eyes would carefully follow Vaughn’s hand as he wrapped plasters and bandages around his cut-up fingers. Then they would move to the living room and watch TV in the dark, Vaughn holding onto his hand until the words and meaning behind ‘don’t pick at the plasters Rhys, I’ve told you so many times’ finally clicked in his head.

     Yvette would sit behind the sofa and pull a comb through his hair, trying to get out the dried blood. She’d always continue even after the comb and her fingers glided through without catching.

     A warm blanket placed over him, Vaughn slowly moving a hand up and down his back under his shirt, and Yvette’s repetitive combing all helped re-ground him.

     When words could find a hold in his mind he’d say sorry and how he didn’t mean it until sleep dragged him under.

          -

     Their cup, mug, plate, and bowl supplies weren’t endless. Even though they no longer spent atrocious amounts on feeding Rhys’ smoking habit, they didn’t have deep pockets. Rhys had been the main money maker of the three.

     They were prepared with emergency funds; anything extra that wasn’t put towards Rhys’ cybernetics was stored away in a shared account.

     Still, they couldn’t keep buying plates and mugs.

     So, when their last glass was smashed against the wall, they didn’t buy more. Vaughn and Yvette got a plastic cup each. Rhys, a plastic ergo mug and bowl, taken straight from the medical bay and once they’d snapped him out of his daydreaming, put it into his waiting hands at the table, because:

          One: Glass shards were hard to clean, tiny pieces lying in wait for the few times they’d decided against shoes or socks.

          Two: The several dents in the – same! – wall too expensive fix with anything but tacked on posters of Handsome Jack taken from Rhys’ side of his and Vaughn’s shared room.

          Three: All the bloody stains only Yvette knew how to get out, and she didn’t particularly enjoy sitting on her knees with a tub of water next to her, scrubbing into the carpet whatever anti-stain she hoarded, over and over.

     The stains from water and whatever bland soup he’d have were easier to clean, damage to walls near impossible with the light plastic.

     He’d sat there looking at it and its Sippy-cup like lid, wanting to cry and scream at the same time.

     The warmth of the hot chocolate within seeped through the plastic. There were at least five different drugs in it, ones that he _needed_ to take.

     He’d gagged it all down, every mouthful tasting like vomit, throat heaving as he drank more.

     Vaughn and Yvette looking on from their meals; concerned but not wanting to make a fuss.

     Rhys hadn’t dealt well with fusses.

     Later he’d cry about it, or laugh and call it and himself stupid, or desperately try and find a way to break this plastic un-smashable cup, for no other reason than just to prove he could.

     But he didn’t have the nerve anymore, the unfounded confidence his brain would force upon him when overwhelmed near the beginning had finally stopped. So, that was that.

     He’d numbly drank from it every day, waiting until he was at least trusted to have the mug without the lid.

     If nothing else, it had helped with the accidental spillages.

     His cybernetic arm hung loosely and was kept in a sling for a lot in the beginning, brain unable to work out that this metal contraption set into him was something it had control over. Only able to move in wide sloppy arcs, individual fingers a complete no-go.

     Whenever he would move it in a single direction everything in his body would strain against it, the arm too heavy for it to handle. (Rhys pulled just about every muscle in his torso and neck in the first week or two. It was only when breathing started to make his chest pulse with pain, that he decided maybe that wasn’t the best way to go about it.)

     Even his friends were above cutting up his food, instead, they opted for soups and cereals, finger foods that could be eaten with only one hand.

     Still, he’d push most away, saying it tasted funny no matter what they’d do to convince him otherwise.

     After eating his fill he’d move to the sofa and using his thumb and forefinger, he’d spend time squeezing his cybernetic’s fingertip pressure sensors. Going from thumb to pinkie then back up.

     The simulated pressure fed into his mind felt like the tactile feedback he’d get from dreams.

     A hazy _happening_ feeling.

     Mind not quite understanding the electrical pulses that came from these five points and nowhere else. Unable to make the same action with his right on his left.

     It didn’t have the same stimulatory feeling as before. It left him with a constant want to do something and being unable to quash the feeling.

     Screaming in the back of his brain until he’d bite his metal fingers wanting to feel something that wasn’t hazy coding.

     Hot tears streaming down his face as he’d bitten on each one harder and harder until he was marring the weak protective metal. Unable to do anything but curl up on himself.

     Vaughn had been drawn from washing dishes to the living room by his friend's heavy breathing and stifled cries, worry morphing into understanding as he inevitably sat down beside Rhys on the sofa.

     Yvette might have tried to pull the cybernetic from his mouth and soothe him in one of only a few ways she knew how.

     

     

     He instead picked up Rhys’ free organic hand and asked Rhys if he could turn on the TV wirelessly yet. Rhys’ mind –being unable to concentrate on two things at once— had instantly picked up this suggestion, going to work on connecting up and controlling the TV with nothing but heavy concentration.

     Vaughn ran his fingers up down Rhys’. Soon his friend’s tears had stopped flowing.

     Rhys himself had been highly aware of the sensation and his cybernetic hand now free in his lap, at least in the back of his mind he was. Everything else in him was distracted with the fact _he’d turned the TV on look Vaughn._

     When Vaughn didn’t respond Rhys mumbled out an apology.

     His speech slurred and the clear effort it took to say ‘ _sor-ry, I’m being irr – taing, sorry’_ just made it that much more painful.

     Rhys’ automatic response became apologies and self-hatred.

     All his emotions were heightened after the surgery; any sense of regulation gone as he shifted from perfect calm to anger then back again. His confidence unending and the idea of regret, hesitation, or embarrassment non-existent.

     He had slipped into an emotionally dulled husk in the following weeks.

     Disappearing at the same rate his bright and curious eyes had.

     These blue and brown eyes framed with black bags now just barely following what was happening on the TV, there was no spark of life and barely one of personality.

     Vaughn kept on with his hand actions, asking Rhys if he could change the channel to something they both liked. After a while, he closed Rhys’ hand to run his thumb over his knuckles and tops of his fingers.

     He turned back to the TV and watched in silence alongside his friend.

          -

     Sickness came with each migraine.

     Stomach churning pain, one that would make him curl up like a wounded animal under his bedsheets. Organic hand pressed onto his port, skin white at the pressure.

     Near ripping out his stitches the first few times, blood would seep through his fingers as skin was pulled and wounds opened.

     He’d make gagging cough and after cough in the dark, almost choking on the breaths he was allowed in-between.

     Tears mixing with the sick that soaked into already vomit and drool stained sheets.

     Yvette dressed in only her underwear pressed the door open, light slipped in from the living room. Rhys moaned at the light pouring onto him, tangling himself further into his sheets, the movement only set off another bout of wet coughs.

     She’d pressed her head into the door’s side and closed her eyes when what she thought was confirmed. She hadn’t needed to see anything in the dark of Rhys and Vaughn’s room; the smell confirmed it.

     An already awake Vaughn looked to her, legs over the side of his bed, head cradled in his hand. Understanding flowed between them.

     Both their bodies slumped in utter resignation.

     She sighed and closed the door, leaving to warm up a heat pack and fill a tub of hot water and bleach in the kitchen.

     Vaughn worked on getting Rhys out of his pyjamas and manoeuvring him to pull off his sheets. Vomit drying into both. All were thrown into an empty laundry basket.

     Getting Rhys into a sitting position, he pulled a towel stored under Rhys’ bed out, pulling it over the lap of his sick friend. Rhys had enough awareness to pull a corner of it up over his chest and hold it there.

     He sat down in front of Rhys, waiting for Yvette to come back and help. Pulling Rhys up every time he started leaning in his tired haze, with only mumbles of _‘Come on Rhys, if you lie down you’ll choke, we know this.’_

     So many nights where it felt like Rhys’ brain had winked out, confused at everything around him and easily moved.

     It never felt like _just a migraine_ , the medication prescribed never seemed to chip away at his pain.

     Yvette came back with tissues and a bowl of water. Helping Vaughn clean up Rhys’ face and hair before telling him she was too tired to run another bath for him, that this would have to do for tonight.

     More quietly, she also asked if he wanted a drink, one already in her hand.

     Alcohol was barred from Rhys; it and the medication he had been taking able to create the perfect poison inside him.

     It would have been a waste to get rid of it all so Yvette moved it to a cooler under her bed. She lied without hesitation when Rhys asked where it all went.

     Yvette took Vaughn's silence for a _no_  and downed the rest of her can.

     She’d then taken all the sheets and clothing with only a shiver.

     Once Rhys’ stomach settled Vaughn allowed him to lie down, remaining on the side of his bed to run his fingers up and down his friend’s palm.

     A never-failing calming method.

     When all the lights were clicked off and Yvette’s bedroom door closed, Vaughn laid back beside Rhys, both of them only just fitting in the bed.

     With Rhys’ organic arm laid over him, he moved the petting actions to run up and down his entire arm, eyes open but staring into nothing. Like a parent resigned to his fate, mentally preparing for another near sleepless night.

     The next morning, for Rhys, everything was off.

     Shooting pain from his eye and port had made him tense up Vaughn’s arms. His right hand had come to claw at his port, metal scratched against metal. Scraping long red lines into his temple, warm blood dripping down his side.

     Another lance of agony made him arch and cry out, a now cold heat pack slipping off his head.

     He twisted out of Vaughn’s arms and onto his knees.

     Cybernetic arm flailing, hitting his friend before falling limp at his side.

     Hand dug into his ECHO eye, nails scraping at the glass screen, its blue flashed and pulsed in the simulated morning lights. His body could give no more tears, left him to bare his teeth in pain and gasp out short breathes.

     Each sharp spike of pain made his body writhe, not knowing where to go to escape it.

     His voice called out against his will, it broke and coughed with each aborted sound and moan.

     A hand wrapped around his wrist and yanked it away from his eye, another pushed near his collar bone. He contorted around it, twisting and pulling in every direction.

     Pulling his hand down and towards him then jerking it forwards.

     Heat flowed over his body, dizziness and vertigo overwhelmed the pain.

     A low hum of confusion as he felt his face and neck flush. The hand around his wrist loosened enough for him to pull it back, placing it over his cheek.

     The world span around him, barely able to keep his eyes open as his body got hotter and hotter.

     All his muscles tensed at once. Neck craning backwards and arm jolting forwards, fingers splayed and shaking.

     Back arching as his lungs stopped.

     He couldn’t breathe.

     New arms caught him when he tipped off the side of the bed, the person almost buckled under his weight but after a moment pulled his stiff body up.

     The other person moved off the bed and hooked their arms under his knees, moving him down the bed.

     Mouth open the only sound he could make was like a snarling dog, tongue caught up in the back of his throat.

     He couldn’t breathe.

     It stopped, and he gasped in air. Too tired for tears to come or to say anything, he sat there, his own breathing too loud in his ears.

     His head in the lap of- of- Fingers ran through his hair.

     The hot flushes started again, he tilted his head to the side like he was trying to hide.

     Tensing up his arm folded into his chest, legs kicking out.

     Chest jolting with sharp, short breaths.

     It stopped and started again for the third time, then the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth.

     Rhys’ eyes rolled back, mind dulled in the exhaustion.

_He couldn’t breathe._

          -

     He was brain damaged.

_Officially_ now.

     It felt obvious when Vaughn and Yvette looked back on it, how he was barely himself in personality and looks.

     The hair near Rhys’ left temple was buzzed off to make room for scalpels and drills.

     A neat backwards ‘c’ shaped scar curled around his temple and the new port, dots from removed stitches ran around the scar’s edges.

     Hair wouldn’t regrow on scar tissue, so when Rhys was aware enough to recognise himself in the mirror and go on grocery runs with a carefully written list, he’d started pulling his hair back. Gelling it back into a style that could at least be mistaken as a deliberate choice.

     He spent every morning tracing his fingers over it, using makeup to at least dull its redness.

     They all tried to go on as normal.

     Vaughn and Yvette knew they were lucky they could afford the emergency treatment for Rhys at all.

     Scans had barely passed through the amount of metal and wire in his head, the parts showed as a blinding white spider-web over his brain. Incision points and areas around the metal showed in black scarring.

     Swelling after surgery had cut it up more, wires and hooks slicing through brain matter like a knife through jelly as it expanded. Long, thin, black slices marred his brain as it retracted and ‘healed’.

     Further black spots and concaves littered amongst the rest of it.

     He shouldn’t have been alive.

     But brains are finicky like that you see.

     Each time something would go wrong Vaughn would get a call and the Star Trek Red Alert would ring out. Because he and Rhys were stupid, and when deciding a sound for the emergency ECHO’s years ago when they first joined Hyperion together, they’d picked a dumb, _fucking_ , antique sci-fi _reference._

     They worked in accounting and data analysis respectively. What could go so _catastrophically_ wrong that an _emergency contact call_ was needed from the medical bay, in a job where 95% of it was sitting down at a computer?

     It was almost funny, in a tragic way.

     His mind associated the sound with late night marathons of Star Trek, popcorn and fizzy drink shared all night as they watched an entire season. Falling asleep on each other halfway through because they barely got enough sleep anyway, pulling an all-nighter when they were already dead on their feet simply wasn’t going to happen.

     The red alert claxon haunted him, and he wouldn’t watch the show when Rhys asked him to.

     The first time the medical bay had called was during the night. Days after Rhys’ first surgery his condition had started to deteriorate due to an infection in what remained of his arm.

     They’d called him and told him a flat voice that his friend was dying, that if he didn’t come in within the next few hours to sign papers to remove all the infected bone, _his entire shoulder_ , they’d let him.

     Agreeing to life-saving treatment _wasn’t_ a choice.

     Agreeing for Rhys to undergo further brain surgery, one just as risky as the other two and force more metal into him with a higher chance of irreversible brain damage, or letting all the surgery and amputation go to waste for the guarantee of Rhys coming out alive and unchanged, _was_.

     He’d cried in Yvette’s arms all night, trying to explain what he’d done in-between sobs. What a terrible friend he’d been. She gave him a similar treatment to the one she'd give Rhys later, dragging her fingers through Vaughn’s hair until he fell asleep in her arms.

     Rhys was placed back in a medical bay bed after the seizures, with an IV and oxygen mask, _the full nine yards_. He looked as pale and sickly as when they first visited him after the surgery. Thin grey sheets and white lighting did little to hide his almost gaunt form.

     They knew he hadn’t been eating well, but…

     Vaughn had taken one look at the before and after pictures of his friend's brain and it was the final thing he could stand; he left without a word.

     Maybe it had been selfish to expect Yvette to give him a rundown later, maybe, but she was better at this stuff.

     Rhys woke to nurses and neurologists looking at him like a new fairground attraction. His friends were worried, but unable to skip work, even for this, too many sick days used just to care for him fresh out of surgery.

     Severe brain injury patient: a lovely little ‘S-TBI’ under ‘Existing Medical Conditions’ on Rhys’ file. (A mark that would be accompanied by many more in the future.)

     They’d tied a bracelet around his wrist, the words **seizure risk** embedded into its metal part, the string tied into a tight knot.

     Nothing he did would pull it off, his cybernetic lacking the dexterity to help, pulling at it with his mouth just made nurses glance at him funny. The nurses in question had refused to remove it for his own safety.

     ‘ _You should wear this at all times from now on,’_ they’d said, Rhys nodded to make them go away, immediately deciding he wouldn’t wear it, _he wouldn’t._

     Rhys was discharged two days later.

     He walked back to their apartment alone, his cybernetic supported inside a new sling.

     The basic white medical bay clothing had stood out amongst the well-dressed crowds of Helios. The bracelet and two bottles of medication he didn’t have pockets to hide, hadn’t helped.

     As big as Helios was, the rumour mill was bigger.

     Eyes followed him through corridors and the elevators he stepped out of. Eyes turned into whispers and mumbles the closer he walked to his old work sector.

_‘Is that him? I thought he’d died?’_

_‘Still alive but the nurses said he was a bit done in the head, though.’_

_‘What a shame, he was a looker too,’_ she’d giggled behind him.

     Numbly he opened and closed the door to home, only then did it stop, did everything _stop_.

     Five hours later, Yvette came home.

     Rhys begged her to untie the bracelet before she even fully stepped through the door. She did so without question.

     Later that night she asked if he wanted to see the MRI scans – if he _really_ wanted to see them; he had every right to them and she wasn’t going to sugarcoat it like she knew Vaughn would.

     Rhys shook his head, already having an idea of what he’d see, and he’d rather not.

     The visible eyesore of a scar was enough for him.

          -

     Since then his improvements were slow but there.

     Yvette bought new glass cups as a birthday and well-done gift.

     From going in for that first surgery to Rhys to convincing Vaughn and Yvette to sign his ‘wellness and sound of mind’ papers so he could start work again, it had been two years.

     Two years and he still had to _convince_ and _beg_ his friends, using all the largest words he could still pronounce and remember, for them to even hesitantly agree he was well enough to work.

     It hadn’t felt like the stellar achievement he thought it would be.

     Vaughn and Yvette, thinking their hesitation to signing the papers had bled through too obvious, had taken the time to buy a pack of his favourite cigarettes. The type with smoke that made Vaughn complain and his eyes water when Rhys insisted on ‘ _just one before work._ ’

     Rhys used to burn through a pack a day using it as ‘get out of jail free card’ in what he’d consider less than desirable situations and as a base to calm his thoughts, force himself to breathe.

     It’d been the same gift handed over to him the day before he got his cybernetics. That smoke the morning of the surgery had felt so… Final. Final yet fond as he lit a cigarette for a hesitant Vaughn, Rhys and Yvette trying to hide giggles as their friend choked on the smoke and spat it out.

     A seven-month induced coma destroyed any need for nicotine.

     He’d risen early on his first day back at work, just so he could set the unopened back on the table and leave before his friends woke.

     No get-well cards or gifts were received in the medical bay and yet when Rhys came back to work everyone smiled and greeted him.

     Glad he was doing well.

     He even got a little welcome back balloon with his name, how about that.

     His voice and words had been getting better, less slurred or stuttered, able to name things off the top of his head without a written reminder on the note section of his ECHO-Eye.

     Recall and elocution would still come and go on a whim. Some days, he spoke with the confidence he used to have, others he stuttered and mumbled every word, never quite sure if the sounds he was using were right, words locked behind a blurry filter.

     What never improved was his _understanding_.

     The extra four or five seconds it took his mind to register speech and piece together a reply, was enough for any and all of his co-workers to forego getting a response from him entirely and move on.

     He’d never noticed how… How patient his friends are.

     They’d abandoned fancy vocabulary in favour of quick and simple sentences, ones Rhys could understand without mental gymnastics. The small, silent moments in between where they’d allow him to think and talk.

     He’d find himself zoning out, getting only snippets of conversation, but being unable to say he had no idea what they’d been talking about for the past half hour. When Vaughn and Yvette noticed they hadn’t even been _mad_ , just repeated the points of the conversation automatically.

     Five seconds had never felt so long until he was always a second too late to reply.

     Others hadn’t been as patient with him missing things they’d said. He’d stopped asking _what_ and started nodding along and agreeing to _whatever_.

     Even so, colleagues had been pulling him by the arm out into the corridor under a guise of a –very strictly timed– smoke break.

     Thick smoke pooled around all of them as they asked Rhys to show them _trick after trick_ the cybernetic arm and eye could accomplish. Giving him data to plug into his temple port and read aloud as they looked over him in awe.

     The first few cigarettes forced into his hand had remained unlit and unused, dropped into the bin under his desk. But eventually, they would catch onto his lack of lighter and lit it for him. One lighting his with her own cigarette, placing it directly into his mouth as he was forced to inhale and join them.

     The unopened pack Vaughn and Yvette gifted him hadn’t stayed that way for long. Rhys fished through the drawers in the kitchen until he found it, friend’s gazes heavy on his back as he’d done so.

     Nobody noticed when he stopped really talking to them at all, he could only get a few words, nods, and mumbles in anyway.

     The novelty of showing off his state-of-the-art cybernetics had quickly worn off.

     He’d been one of the first to get it but nowhere near the last, the same arm on others became a common sight in the upper echelon Rhys worked. They no longer asked him for demonstrations or went _wow_ when he created a hologram.

     And after a while, watching a brain-damaged Rhys try to talk, keep up with conversations, and zone out against his will lost its hilarity and its novelty just like his cybernetics had.

     Left to the company of only a cigarette in the corridors.

     Soon the days felt shorter than they had before.

     Rhys wasn’t having fun, but the time seemed to fly nonetheless. Clocks moving in increments of five minutes but only to him.

     The thought of ‘ _where am I, what am I doing?’_ became uncomfortably common.

     Looking at his screen but reading no words and then down to his keyboard, he’d lift up his hands confused to what he was doing, having to turn and see others around him at their desks before it clicked.

     He’d twist back to his computer and the text form would be full of lines – pages even – of whichever letter he’d been pressing.

     It was unnerving at best.

     He’d voiced his concerns in the Helios medical bay, but it only got him four extra daily pills with the advice that they’d help the stress, and to try not to let it get to him.

     Vaughn and Yvette had handed over the keys to the medicine cabinet before they signed his work papers, so there had been no reason to lie to them or worry them about this.

     After a while, it became obvious the medication didn’t help, either his body gave up on the dozen different pills he’d hesitantly swallow after meals, or they’d never helped in the first place.

     All the side effects: the dizziness, blurry vision, lack of coordination, drowsiness, the milder headaches and stomach pains kept coming, but with seemingly none of the benefits.

     He still had chunks of time disappear and the seizures didn’t stop.

     His friends had noted: These zone outs, _these daydreams_ , were almost always quick little things.

     Moments where his eyes would drift to the side, hazy, mouth slightly parted, like he was trying to remember something. Then he’d jump right back to finish the sentence he’d started, seemingly none the wiser.

     But sometimes, they didn’t play out like a paused and un-paused video; he’d mumble nonsense and chew at the inside of his mouth for a time afterwards. Like the plug between _Rhys_ and his body had been pulled.

     He would look at them with utter fascination, like they were the first people he’d ever seen.

     Rhys had still been on morphine and a concoction of other drugs when it had started. Things like that hadn’t been particularly unexpected.

     But now they couldn’t stop the nervous side glances they’d share with each other each time it would happen.

     They were only thankful that Rhys didn’t notice the way others would whisper, the quick glances behind them they’d give when Rhys zoned out in the corridors.

 

     It was constant.

 

     But they could wait it out.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Phew okay, thanks for reading the chapter! Tell me what you thought! :)
> 
> The relationships are implied which is why the fic is Gen, it might change in the future so if it does I'll update it accordingly.


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